Primary/Secondary in wrong order at a.root-servers.net

[Kevin Darcy]

Daniel Norton wrote:

> On 28 Jun 2000 09:29:10 -0700, "MexiAce" <staalejg at bigfoot.com> wrote:
> >I registered a domain name with Network Solutions and entered 2 dns servers.
> >When I do an nslookup on a.root-servers.net, the servers are listed in the
> >wrong order as compared to how they show up on a whois lookup at the Network
> >Solutions web site.  Any reason for this?
>
> Each time you look it up, it returns them in a random order.  That way, if the
> resolvers only look at the first one, the load will be distributed among the two
> servers.  So the order doesn't really matter as long as it changes.

Actually, NS records are mostly for the benefit of nameservers rather than
resolvers and BIND nameservers, at least, mostly ignore the order of NS records,
preferring faster nameservers over slower ones.


- Kevin